


The Revolution in Our Stars

by jonewtonwritesstuff



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Genre: Crossover, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29643138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonewtonwritesstuff/pseuds/jonewtonwritesstuff
Summary: It's "The Fault in Our Stars" but with revolution and hot French people.
Relationships: Combeferre/Courfeyrac (Les Misérables), Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. One

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my father decided I was a threat to the state, presumably because I had been president of my school’s social justice club and currently spent quite a lot of time harassing government officials, ran an anarchist Tumblr, protested frequently, and only escaped arrest by milking my cancer for all its worth.   
Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, despite my lungs’ fatal obsession with not breathing, I was not depressed. Well, that’s not true. I did not have depression. I was, and am, and will be until the day I finally literally drown in my sorrow of cancer, depressed with the way the world works. I knew it was not depression because I used my anger and sadness to promote change, instead of being reduced to a person overwhelmed by unintentional apathy. Working to change the world is a side effect of dying. (Cancer and depression are also side effects of dying. Almost everything is, really.) But my father wanted to suppress me, so he took me to see Government Doctor Javert, who announced that I was veritably swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression, and therefore my meds should be adjusted and also I should attend a weekly “Support Group”, which was conversion therapy in disguise. The person who filled my prescription, Valjean, understood. He gave me sugar pills and switched me to a Legitimate Support Group.This Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying.  
The Support Group, of course, was depressing as the current political state. It met every Wednesday in the basement of a stone-walled Episcopal church shaped like a cross. It was made worse by the fact that I didn’t know anybody there, but I still dutifully went. The group was led by an old man who used to work in Congress named Senator Lamarque. Lamarque was a kind man, and he’d made lots of great political strides in his day, but he was out of touch with teens and certainly teens who were dying. I had tremendous respect for his political career, but his post-retirement career as a Cancer Coach (a self-prescribed title) was less than stellar. Every week, Lamarque began with the story of his “cancertastic” past: how he was serving in the Senate and then had to take a medical leave for the cancer they found in his balls and he almost died but he got better and then retired because he’d found the meaning of life was milking his past in front of teens.  
Anyways, on the day my life would change forever, I was desperately trying to avoid Support Group. My mom, the kind and loving woman she is, was sympathetic to my feelings of general malaise. But my father, still believing I was attending Conversion Therapy, was adamant that I go. So I went.  
I was contemplating taking the elevator to the basement of the church where Support Group met when a new boy showed up next to me. He reached past me and pushed the elevator button, then looked me in the eyes. He was incredibly attractive: he had mangy black hair and some stubble on his face, deep green eyes, and a gray beanie on his head. My eyes glanced over him, taking in his paint-stained jeans and his short-sleeved button down under an unzipped green sweatshirt. He was wearing combat boots, just like me. I tugged on my red jacket, suddenly very hot.  
The elevator arrived and I pulled my oxygen cart inside, feeling my cheeks blush. He followed me inside.  
“Here for the Support Group?” I asked, my voice cracking. I felt stupid for asking such an obvious question.  
“Yeah. It’s my first time.”  
“Ah,” I said unintelligently.  
The elevator door opened and the boy stepped out, a barely noticeable limp betraying what I guessed was a side effect of his ailment. I pulled my oxygen cart behind me, wishing I could hide my illness as easily as he could.


	2. Two

We all sat in a circle, listening to Senator Lamarque share about his ball-less retirement. Or at least we were supposed to. The boy and I were busy staring at each other. I shifted in my plastic seat, determined to win this imaginary contest.  
I suddenly heard what Lamarque was saying. “Maybe your friend would like to share?”  
A girl who was sitting next to him poked the boy in the side. “R,” she whispered, “it’s your turn."  
The boy stood up stiffly, though I wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t trained to look for such things. “My name is Tristan Grantaire,” he said. “I lost this leg to osteosarcoma two years ago, but I’m really here at Eponine’s request.” He gestured at the girl next to him.  
“And… and how are you doing?” Lamarque asked.  
“I’m grand.” He smiled. I’m on a rollercoaster that only goes up.”  
“That’d be a boring rollercoaster,” I mumbled.  
“Julien!” Lamarque was surprised. “Did you have something to contribute?”  
I made eye contact with the boy — Tristan. “I said that’d be a boring rollercoaster.”  
“Julien,” Lamarque chastised me. But Tristan was smiling.  
“That’s a fair point,” he said. “I guess I’m on a spaceship flying away from my fears.”  
“What are those fears?” Lamarque asked.  
“Oblivion. I fear oblivion.” I scoffed, and raised my hand.  
“Yes, Julien? You’re speaking up a lot today."  
“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species did anything. There will be no one left to remember Robespierre or George Washington, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this,” I gestured around the room we were in, “will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was a time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. Do something! Change the world! Now matters, but it won’t last forever. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone does.”  
I stopped talking and looked around the circle. Lamarque looked shocked. The guy whispered something in the girl’s ear, and then looked back at me. “Hot damn,” he said with a smile. “You are something else.”


	3. Three

The rest of Support Group passed without anything remarkable occurring. When it was over, I walked to the elevator. I was curious if Tristan would follow me, but he was talking with some other people. He must be making friends.  
I rode up the elevator and exited the church, then sat down on the curb, waiting for my mom to come pick me up. My mom was… something else. She was 100% French, the first of her family to live in America. She had had a brilliant career as a fashion designer, but gave that all up when she married my father. And then when I got sick, that became her whole world. Nobody — other than an oncologist — knows more about Stage IV Thyroid cancer that has metastasized in a patient’s lungs than my mom. She was overbearing — the extreme form of a helicopter parent — but her heart was in the right place, so it was tolerable.  
Suddenly, I felt a presence above me. I looked up, and the boy — Tristan — was standing next to me. He sat down on the curb.  
“What’s your name?” he asked.  
“Enjolras,” I responded. I usually went by my last name.  
“No, your full name,” he pressed.  
“Julien Philippe Enjolras.” I paused. “And you?”  
“Tristan Grantaire.”  
“Nice to meet you, Tristan.”  
The door to the church opened, and the girl who’d been sitting next to Tristan walked out. “See you later, Eponine,” Tristan called out. The girl flipped her middle finger up at him while smiling. Tristan returned the favor. He turned back to me. “That’s my best friend, Eponine,” he said. “I’ve known her practically forever.”  
“And you both have cancer?” I asked. “That’s rather unlikely.”  
“Tell me about it.”  
Tristan then did something unthinkable. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a box of cigarettes, and stuck one in his mouth.  
“Really?” I asked, incredulous. “Really?”  
“What?” he asked, as if he wasn’t mocking me.  
“You had cancer, and you’re willing to pay money to a corporation for the chance to acquire more cancer? And what about me? I can’t breathe, yet you’re willing to smoke in front of me! Let me assure you: not being able to breathe sucks.”  
“Hm.” He looked at me with an unreadable expression on his face.  
“You just ruined the whole thing. Whatever this was, it’s over."  
“I did? I really ruined the whole thing?”  
“Yeah. And you were doing really well, too.” I saw my mom pulling up in our car.  
“Julien Enjolras, they only hurt you if you light them. And I’ve never lit one. It’s a metaphor.”  
I turned back to him. “What?”  
“A metaphor. You put the thing that does the killing between your teeth, but don’t give it the power to kill you.”  
“A metaphor,” I repeated, uncertain.  
“Julien Enjolras, why don’t you come over? You can tell me more about why I shouldn’t be afraid of oblivion."  
This boy was crazy. “I hardly know you!”  
“Give me a chance,” he said, somewhere between being cocky and begging me to listen.  
My mom pulled up to the sidewalk. “Ready to go watch more Eurovision?” she asked.  
I looked at her, then looked at Tristan, then looked back at her. “Actually, I’m going to Tristan Grantaire’s house.”


End file.
